Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a charging processing technique to perform charging in accordance with a toner consumption amount that is necessary for printing processing.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there exists an image forming apparatus having a charging function to perform charging each time a user performs printing. Here, there are a variety of charging systems that are adopted in the image forming apparatus, and as an example of the charging system, there exists stepwise charging in which the charging amount increases stepwise as the toner consumption amount increases.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-43494 discloses a printing apparatus that determines a charging amount in accordance with a toner consumption amount by calculating the toner consumption amount at the time of printing an image and performs image processing to reduce the toner consumption amount so that the charging amount will be within the range corresponding to the amount of money that is put into by a user. Further, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-43494 discloses that the image processing to reduce the toner consumption amount described above may be performed by an information processing apparatus, such as a PC, in place of the printing apparatus.